I’m in JPN 102 right now, and I just feel like everyone is above whatever we are learning at all times. It’s almost like they’ve studied Japanese before taking the actual class and it’s making me feel so insecure and behind during class. I don’t want to drop the class over anxiety and feeling nervous but I feel like I’m heading there.
How do you stop comparing yourself and just focus on what you’re doing? I don’t want to quit.
by sillymoodeng
4 comments
Comparison is the thief of joy.
More importantly, if your goal is to speak Japanese, then all you have to do is keep working to speak Japanese. How well others are doing has absolutely no effect whatsoever on your goal. This is a solo venture, supported by others at moments but it’s all you in the end. They could fail, excel, become haiku masters—it doesn’t matter and has no bearing on your goals and how well *you* speak the language. And that’s all that matters.
If you quit now, you will either *never* speak Japanese, or you will start again in howevermany years. And those years are years when you *could* have been furthering your goal. Do you want that?
The only thing you control is *you.*
I just got my N3 certification. I know N3 well, and I’m actively studying N2. I go to school in Japan. I read manga and other japanese sources daily, but my speaking has fallen behind.
A girl transferred to my class 2 weeks ago, and she speaks *so well*. Like, I have trouble understanding her because her cadence is so quick, it sometimes feels like I’m speaking with a native.
When I actually talked to her – asked her why her speaking skills are so far ahead of the rest of the class – she told me that she had been studying for 12 years. Her study just had a much more in depth focus on speaking, and up until the last couple years, she didn’t worry as much on the grammar. Now I notice that, on tests and homework for *new material*, we basically score the same points. She doesn’t learn faster than me, she isn’t some super genius – she just has much, much more experience talking than I do.
The point I’m trying to make is that everyone is at a different point in their own journey. Everyone studies in different ways, and because of that their skills get expressed in different ways. And unless you talk with these people, you don’t know if they’re 100% beginner like you, or maybe they have done a bit of self studying before the class. Don’t worry about what level other people are at, but instead think about what you can do to improve yourself.
Well you’ve simply got to study harder and beat them.
Who do you do it for? (If you can answer this question this should resolve your issue)